His jaw flexed, a muscle ticking near his ear.“That’s not something I handle well.”
She let out a soft huff that wasn’t quite a laugh.“You handled it by ripping apart a troll cage and almost starting a war.We’re supposed to be getting their help, remember?”
“I had no way of knowing if you were in danger, yeah?You know my wolf instincts are to kill anything that keeps me from you.Nothing will ever change that.I’d kill Fane himself if it came down to getting to you.”It was not an exaggeration.
She frowned.“Don’t say that.He’s our friend and the Alpha of alphas.”
He shrugged.“He’d do the same to me if I attempted to keep Jacque from him.Every male wolf would.It keeps things interesting.Never a dull moment with mated male wolves always on the verge of killing someone or something.”
The smile she gave him didn’t quite reach her eyes, and that was what moved him forward.His hand slid down from her face to her shoulder, then along the slope of her arm in a slow drag of fingertips and palm until he found her hand and laced their fingers together.He tugged her in by the grip until there was no space left between them, until the soft front of her body met the harder line of his and her chin tipped up automatically to keep his eyes.
“You’re different,” he murmured.
He felt her body still against him.The smallest stiffening, there and gone, like a held breath.
There it was.That flicker behind her eyes that she would never name out loud.Insecurity.The new, quiet uncertainty of a woman whose body was changing under her own hands faster than her mind could catch up.
She glanced away from him, just barely, her gaze sliding sideways toward the glowing wall.“Well, yeah.That tends to happen when you’re growing an entire human.”
His free hand came up immediately, his fingers slipping under her chin and turning her face gently back to his.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
Her brow furrowed.“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that’s something I could ever not want.”
Her breath hitched audibly between them.
He watched it.He felt it.He let it settle into him before he moved his other hand from her hip to the soft, low curve of her stomach.The swell wasn’t pronounced yet, just a gentle change under her robe that he had to know to feel for, but it was there.Real.Present.His palm spanned it easily, his fingers fanning out across the warm fabric, and the weight of what was beneath his hand caught him in the throat all over again.
His.Theirs.“Do you have any idea,” he said, voice dropping low, “what this does to me?”
Her lips parted.“Nick.”
“You smell different.”He leaned in until his nose brushed the soft skin just beneath her ear, and he dragged a slow inhale that pulled her scent all the way down into his chest.His eyes slid closed at the way it hit him.“Stronger.Warmer.Like every part of me is being pulled toward you, whether I want it or not.And I always want it.”
Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, twisting in the fabric.
His wolf pressed closer to the surface, the heat of it spreading through his skin like a banked fire someone had just blown across.“You taste different, too.”His mouth grazed the line of her throat as he spoke, a barely-there brush of lips that made her shiver against him.“Sweeter.And something else underneath it.Something that makes it very hard to think about anything except getting my mouth on you.”
A slow flush climbed up her chest and into her cheeks, beautiful in the amber light.
“Stop,” she whispered.There was no protest in the word.None at all.
“Not a chance.”His hands moved to the soft tie at her hip, his fingers working the knot loose with slow, deliberate care.He refused to be rushed through this.The robe loosened.He gathered the front of it in both hands and parted it gently, easing the fabric back from her shoulders, letting it slide down her arms and pool at her feet in a soft hush of cloth.
He didn’t reach for her right away, instead he looked at his mate.Took in her lovely form.His breath left him in a long, low exhale, the kind that came from somewhere beneath the lungs.
“Look at you.”
She shifted under the weight of his gaze, one of her arms moving instinctively across her stomach.
His hand caught her wrist with the careful grip he’d never used on anything but her, and he drew it gently back down to her side.
“No,” he murmured.“Don't hide.”
Her voice came out softer now."I'm not hiding."
